


In the Halls of Gargantua

by Bobsled_Hostage



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Anal Sex, Begging, Brainwashing, Breeding, Canon-Typical Violence, Cults, Cunnilingus, Drunk Sex, Dwarves, F/F, F/M, Forced Orgasm, Gags, Giants, Group Sex, Humiliation, Infanticide, Love Bombing, M/M, Multi, Multiple Orgasms, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Non-Penetrative Sex, Oral Sex, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Restraints, Sexual Slavery, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Size Difference, Snowballing, Spit As Lube, Urination, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Fisting, Vomiting, survival sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:29:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27783769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bobsled_Hostage/pseuds/Bobsled_Hostage
Summary: On the crest of a hill, above a deserted city and a beach of black sand, sits the giant's castle - beautiful, menacing, impossibly large. Long abandoned, but still stalked by monsters. Plundered countless times, yet still filled with riches.Fabulous treasure and horrible fates await those who enter its ever shifting halls.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	1. Stone

The four adventurers from the Monarchy wandered the abandoned castle for over a day. They passed through chasms and over enormous bridges, amid statue gardens and calcified caverns where the sound of drums echoed somewhere out of sight. They pried topazes and carnelians of modest value from the faces of stone Jarls long dead, and even fished a few tokens of hammered electrum from between the cyclopean flagstones of a lost throne room.

In a vast mead hall, they found the first living things they were to encounter on their journey: seven ogre babies. Sucking on pieces of furniture and casting them noisily into the firepit in the center of the room, screaming and laughing as they burned, chasing the occasional rat, and shitting all over everything.

Without hesitation, Jollo stepped forward and struck one with his pollaxe, pulverising the brain and killing it before it could begin wailing. The others joined in, and the massacre became general. All except Doria, who was overcome with a deep revulsion at the act, which made her face hot and her insides turn. She stumbled out through the iron door, fell to her knees and vomited. And that’s why she wasn’t in the room when the father of the ogre children showed up and killed everyone.

Oh, she saw him go in, through the tears and mucous that came up with her breakfast. He paid her no notice, sweeping past on good high boots of mammoth leather that made a very sophisticated clacking sound on the stone floor. She’d replay that sound in her head for the rest of her life, for reasons we’ll get to in a second. By the time she recovered her senses, he was already in the room beyond, snuffing out her companions with a few swats of his granite morganstern.

Then he came back to deal with her. 

“Your friends slew my children. I slew them in turn.” He wore a handsome jacket and had a rich, sonorous voice, with none of the harshness she expected from an ogre. “You didn’t participate in the massacre.”

She shook her head. By then, she had at least picked her _shashka_ up off the floor, for all the good it would do.

“Did you try to stop them, even a little?”

The stone club dangling in his right hand was chipped, and tufted with what she imagined was a sticky clump of Reuben’s hair.

“No, I didn’t”

There was no reason to lie. No reason to load her soul down with another sin for the Hammerer to beat out of her, since she was about to meet him.

“Mmm.” He hefted the mace in both hands, then idly swung it back to rest on the ground. “Still, it seems indecent to slay you for a pang of conscience, even a small one.” He stood at ease, leaning on the mace like a cane and crossing one leg. “So I’ll make you an offer still more indecent: Lie with me, replenish my slain progeny, and no harm will come to you.”

Doria clutched the backsword tighter. She had been warned that too severe a grip would ruin the cut, but she couldn’t help it.

“...I don’t think I can.”

Why was she negotiating?

“Oh? Am I so hideous?” This line he delivered without a hint of irony. His square face with its sharp eyebrows remained fixed in its severe-yet-dolorous grimace.

“I don’t know that I could bear your children, even if I lay with you.”

“Very well.” He curled the fingers of his free hand into a fist with a luxuriant cracking sound, then uncurled them. “You have my word on the bones of the God King that if I can’t successfully inseminate you, you will walk free.”

Oh.

She saw how it was. The Hammerer was giving her a choice. Take her lumps now, atone for her sins right here on the filthy castle floor. So when her soul finally knelt before him on the Celestial Anvil, he’d grumble that she’d paid her dues, and send her on to the First Cave without so much as a broken finger. He was tough, but fair, the Hammerer. He never struck harder than you deserved, and once he was done breaking you, you were free.

So she wiped a smear of her own puke off her curved blade, then sheathed it. The ogre gave her his handkerchief to clean her mouth - an enormous square of cloth, probably cut from someone’s cloak or cape. Then she began to strip.

First went the small, disc-shaped shield she kept on her belt. Then she undid her belt and carefully laid her _kindjal_ aside. She pulled her mail byrnie over her head and wriggled out of her woolen gambeson. She peeled off the wrap she wore to keep her breasts from heaving painfully when she ran - the ogre stared approvingly at her large, dark nipples. She undid her heavy boots, slipped out of her pants, and the second layer of cavespider silk she wore beneath. With only her tangle of wiry pubic hair between herself and total nakedness, she sat on his fur coat, which he spread on the ground like a vast blanket. She was scared, but she wouldn’t flinch.

Then he pressed her onto her back, licked a finger and stuffed it inside her. And that made her flinch, just a little.

She had been penetrated before. Up her ass, amid the steamy pools of the fortress baths, offering her rear to a handsome stonecutter in trade for some favor. That was the way things were done in the Mountainhomes. She had never been fucked from the front. Her vagina was inviolate, until the ogre violated it. She expected it to hurt, and it did. His single digit was larger than any dick she’d ever seen. Mercifully, his close trimmed fingernails did not tear or snag at her insides, except the membrane of her hymen. He stopped when his finger came out wet with blood. He gave her a moment to grit her teeth and swear and clutch her aching genitals like it would make any difference.

She wasn’t going to rub her eyes (and thus let him know they had teared up) but she rubbed her eyes when she saw his dick.

What is there to say about it? It was clean, ranged in color from fleshy pink to rich raspberry purple, and stood upright amid a bush of well trimmed hair (which got caught in things and irritated his skin when it grew too long). Oh, and it was larger than her arm.

She swallowed. “That… I can’t fit that inside me.”

He flexed his pelvic floor muscles, making it bounce. A heavy droplet of pre sprang loose from the tip and went splat on the flagstones. Either he was violently aroused by the death of his children, or watching her strip had gotten him more worked up than he let on.

“I’m aware.”

He pushed the iron door shut, jammed the handle with a brazier to ensure they wouldn’t be interrupted. Then he took his pants the rest of the way off and sat on the fur. She scooted back to give him space. He pulled her back with an enormous hand, crowding her against his magnum dong.

“Touch it.”

Up close, his voice made the flagstones rumble beneath her butt. She touched his dick. It was warm, probably the warmest part of his body. She detected his barely palpable flinch when she laid her chilly hands on it. Served him right, for making her strip. It pumped in time with his heart, making the whole thing twitch slowly.

“Caress it.”

She put a hand on each side of the shaft. She pressed down until she could feel the rigid blood vessels beneath the skin. And she began to jack him off. She couldn’t stroke his whole length from a kneeling position and had to awkwardly crouch over his balls. Fuck, this was going to tire her arms out. As if to give her something more to complain about, her slow milking squeezed another drop of precum out of his crown, which leaked down and went splat in her hair.

“Lick it.”

She swallowed. Apparently, Ogre men had the same oral fixation as dwarven stonecutters. She licked it, using just the tip of her tongue. It had a faint taste of sweat and lye soap, and smelled the same. He put a finger on the back of her head - the same one he stuffed inside her earlier - and pressed her face into his enormous dick.

“The spot beneath the head. Worship it with your mouth.”

She slobbered over the spot, dense with nerve endings. She had to wrap her arms around the shaft to hold herself upright. She licked and kissed and drooled and gasped for air. She craned her neck and turned her head sideways, to close her lips around the taught band of tissue, which stretched vertically down from the base of his crown. Her arms and legs were already killing her, and now her jaw was going to be sore.

“Wrap your whole body around the shaft.”

That took her a moment to figure out. She tried to clamber up it and stepped on his balls in the process. He gave an irritated hiss and lifted her with a hand on her ass, so she could get a secure hold without further stomping his jewels. She obligingly wrapped her arms and legs around his cock, squeezing with her thighs and arms.

“Rub yourself against it.”

His voice rumbled through his dick, and thus through her whole body. She braced her bare feet on his pubic bone and began to rub, twerking her ass and rubbing her crotch up and down his pole. Her sweaty breasts squished against his shaft, heaving in time with her movements. She wasn’t slick at all, but she’d smeared his dick with enough drool and sweat that he probably wouldn’t notice the difference. Flexing her hips and rocking her pelvis made the ache in her freshly deflowered sex that much worse. She took the pain with nothing more than a soft grunt every time her wide ass touched down against his balls. Another debt of suffering paid to the Hammerer.

Her pace must have been too slow - or he just wanted to humiliate her - because he wrapped a hand around her body and began to jerk off, with her between his fingers and his big dick. That put some real fear into her, because she knew that men tended to squeeze when they came, and he could easily crush her against his cock. And he did it fast enough to chafe, until she held on tight so that the skin glided up and down the shaft with her.

“Beg for it,” he grunted. He sounded huskier now, with more of the timbre you’d expect from an ogre. Maybe his normal speaking voice was affected.

“Seed me,” she wheezed, letting herself be humiliated if it meant this would end faster. “Fill me with your cum-” she coughed when he squeezed just a bit too hard. “Finish inside me, please.”

“Very well.” He rose to a kneeling position, so that she dangled off the floor for a moment, suspended on his shaft. He pried her off his cock with gentleness that must have taken extreme muscular control, given the circumstances. He deposited her on her back, on the fur.

“Do it, please.” she rasped.

“Spread your legs.”

She did so, presenting her freshly opened cunt. When she felt his massive glans butt against her labia, she panicked, afraid he was about to renege on their bargain and split her in two with a single, messy thrust. He pinned her with a hand on her chest, insurance against cum dodging. Then he gave his dick a single pump with his fist and shot a watermelon sized prostate’s worth of cum into her. He had the slit of his dick pressed right up to the slit of her vagina and got most of the first and second jets inside, though with the size of the load some backsplash was inevitable. To Doria, it felt like rinsing herself with warm water at the baths, only in reverse - like the filth was forcing its way in, rather than draining out. The fresh coating of jizz caused the ogre’s cock to slip upward. The third and final squirt spattered across Doria’s belly, chest and face. And because she had been watching wide eyed as the ogre seeded her, she was caught off guard and blinded by a bucketload of semen.

That was the straw that broke the Draltha’s back. She sputtered through a mouthful of cum and rubbed her eyes, shouting with rage. She’d peel the skin off his stupid dick with her bare hands, she’d beat his balls to a bloody pulp, she’d-

He laughed. It was a beautiful sound, much higher than his bassy voice. And it was at her expense, yes, but not malicious. A gentle chuckle, the kind you made when something funny happened during sex, which it often did. It was the most genuine and emotional sound she had heard from him.

She crossed her arms and laid on her back. “Asshole.”

He draped his handkerchief over her by way of apology, covering her from head to groin. She called him an asshole again, then lay still for a moment, allowing her protesting muscles a moment of respite.

But she found that she wasn’t tired. In a twisted way, she felt energized. Almost the same as if she’d came, and was ready to do so again. She hadn’t liked any part of the physical experience one bit, and she felt no swell of lust for the ogre - even with his big dick and impeccable dress sense. But in a twisted way, she acknowledged some part of her wanted to go again. Like the way after a fight she sometimes in the moment prayed that Gods, please, someone else try to attack her - even if she barely survived the initial onslaught. When the body, pickled in stress hormones, reacts automatically. Ready for another round, even if she hadn’t enjoyed the first.

“Can you walk?”

“...Yeah. Give me a moment.”

She wiped her face and wriggled out from under the cloth. The giant was squeezing a few last drops out of his penis - to ensure they didn’t drip out into his pants after he dressed.

So Doria followed suit. She cleaned herself up. First by wiping her body with the giant hankie, then by splashing her waterskin on the cloth and wiping down her crotch. She had to get the knotted edge up inside her sore opening to sponge the giant’s load out, which stung as though was fingering her again. But she wasn’t interested in sleeping in cumstained clothing. She tugged her pants over her overgenerous hips, bound her tits comfortably, then pulled on clothing and armor. The giant, for his part, had already tucked his penis away before she buckled either of her blades on. Torpedoing any chance of acting on an intrusive thought involving her _shashka_ and the base of his dick.

The ogre straightened his cravat and removed the brazier blocking the iron door. He pulled it open and stepped back, with an exaggerated “after you” sweep of his hand.

Doria squinted. “You’re coming with me?”

“Don’t sound surprised. If my seed takes hold inside you, I must safeguard the mother of my children. If not, I must attempt again.” He grabbed his dick through his pants. On anyone else it would have been an unremarkable lewd gesture. On him, it was so unexpected and out of tempo with his utterly bland facial expression that it became genuinely funny.

So she pretended not to laugh at him, and he pretended he hadn’t done anything amusing, and then they went back into the mead hall to finish their business there.

Jollo, Reuben and Marcia were crumpled and smeared across the room in various attitudes of death. They hadn’t been Doria’s bosom friends, but she had fought alongside them, which was something. They made life a little better, and she was sad to see them go. She looted their bodies in silence, slipping rings off shattered fingers, wringing blood out of silk, and dumping pouches of coins into her own purse. She pulled down Jollo’s pants and manually verified that the story about his very expensive piercing was a lie. Frankly, his cock smelled a whole lot worse than the ogre’s, even at arm’s length. The ogre who had killed them, and who she had just fucked.

“Hammerer, you have a strange sense of humor,” Doria said to nobody in particular. How the hell was she going to get out of this one?

Between her legs, an errant string of jizz dribbled out of her bruised lips and stained her silk underpants. She swore.

The ogre (whose name, she later learned, was Wallace) occupied himself with a similar ritual - minus the dribbling jizz. He stoked the sputtering fire in the pit with more furniture, tossing in tables where his children had thrown chairs. Once the embers had become a blaze he gathered up the splattered remains of his brood and cast them into the pyre. He wiped his hands on a moth eaten tablecloth, and was done.

The part of his mind he kept locked up - the part that ate raw meat and smeared rancid fat on itself and cringed at any light brighter than the moon - raged at the death of its seven children. It demanded he revenge himself immediately on the dwarf Doria, whether or not she had struck the killing blow.

The part of his mind he let out whenever it pleased - the one that wore beautiful boots and used words like _statecraft_ and _gunpowder weapons_ and _absolute monarchy_ \- was happy. Yes, the extinction of his entire line was a tragedy. Thankfully, it had happened before they started using words like “daddy” and “love” and “help me” - before he had grown attached to them. And in exchange, he had acquired a woman. Sturdy, voluptuous, a decent conversationalist, and _just_ the right amount of submissive. Yes, her size was a problem, but there were ways around that - as he had just demonstrated. He didn’t have high hopes for actually impregnating her, or for viable offspring if his seed took hold. But that needn’t spoil his fun.

He had promised that if he couldn’t knock the stocky dwarf woman up, he’d let her walk free. What he had _not_ specified is how many attempts he would allow himself before throwing in the towel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting inspired by the module _Castle Gargantua_ , a gothic horror megadungeon.
> 
> Tone inspired by now-deleted Hentai Foundry user Emilywintercold, who wrote a superb series called _Tales of Dylak Leem_. It was sometimes silly and often cliche, but reliably delivered smutty fantasy adventure. I didn't save it and now it's gone forever.
> 
> Various elements taken from _Dwarf Fortress_ , which I haven't played for years because I know I'll get sucked back into it if I do.


	2. Lust

The three treasure hunters from the Commonwealth quickly became lost in the giant’s pleasure palace. They wandered the ruins of orgies long ended, through cavernous harems smeared with rotting meringue. They climbed pottery urns in perfumed gardens, overgrown with flowers the size of small trees, and skirted reflecting ponds filled with carp the size of small whales. The whole place felt wrong - covered with a layer of gaudy decoration that couldn’t quite disguise the rot. The “treasures” they recovered were all worthless baubles - glass beads and tin bracelets, made up to look like gems and gold. Even the walls were a sweaty clay-like stone, made up to look like polished marble.

So they were on their guard when they entered the boudoir.

But not on their guard enough.

The slavers ambushed them from beneath the thick rugs, behind the legs of enormous furniture, and from above. The treasure hunters had shields, spears and spells ready, but the slavers’ wheellocks were loaded with fistsful of stinging salt, which could knock a man down at a hundred paces. And knock them down they did. 

Remontoire the fighting man fell dead in spite of his protective armor, a chance fragment of shot tumbling through his eyesocket and into his brain case. The priestess Cosma and the elf Freike fell stunned to the ground, and were taken alive.

The slave takers bound their two captives, stole everything of value they carried, then hauled them up atop the giant bed, a full two stories above the floor. They had a camp there, between the pillows, with a commanding view of the square mile of stained sheets that covered the mattress. 

There were six of them in total. They were rough looking and had come to the giant’s castle for the same reason as the treasure hunters, sort of. While the adventurers hoped to leave with coins, jewelry and magic items, the slavers planned to leave with the castle’s human inhabitants in tow. The slavers’ other catches were a frumpy looking halfing woman who avoided looking at anyone, and a disheveled ghoul who grinned wickedly, apparently unconcerned by the manacles around his wrists.

Cosma and Freike were sat before the leader of the pack. He was a grimy yet cheerful fellow and he had the experienced brigand’s eye for assessing the value of a haul. He spoke to each of them in turn, nodding sagely at their answers. Cosma expected Freike to annoy the bandit with his cheerful and sarcastic disregard for his own disadvantageous position. She was not surprised when the slaver struck him, though he did it with a smile on his face that suggested he wasn’t _really_ annoyed. Then he turned to her. He had taken her holy symbol from her belongings, and dangled it in front of her.

“Ye wear the garb of the Life Goddess. Do ye count yeself a healer?”

“Yes.” Make yourself valuable. Make yourself good for something other than warming their bedrolls.

The bandit nodded. “Can ye purge a man of illness?”

“No. Not yet.” As an initiate of only the second rank, the power to cure illness was beyond her capabilities.

The thug grimaced, then smiled again. “BURYA!” He shouted to one of his henchmen. “This one’s yours!”

“Wait! I can learn!” She sputtered. “It’s part of our mysteries, I swear, just give me a chance and I’ll learn!”

The man’s grin widened. “Aye, ye’ll have plenty of reason to learn. Auld Burya will see to that”.

She screamed as one of the burly slavers yanked her to a standing position. The leader laughed, and shouted over Freike’s protests.

“Look on the bright side, missy: after he has a go, no one else will touch ye!”

In the time they had been talking, the sun sank enough to tint the whole room red through the thin curtains that covered the arched windows, which stretched to the ceiling a full eighty feet above. Burya dragged Cosma into the shade of the headboard, clouted her a couple times to stop her struggling, and lifted her skirts. She wore two sacred bands around her thigh, but no underclothes. Burya grunted in satisfaction and began fussing over his own buttons. Her vision was hazy, but Cosma saw him drop his pants in the half light. It was exactly as she had feared.

Burya’s dick was covered in glistening red pox, which shone like garnet cabochons. Cosma kicked weakly. Her head was ringing too loud to scream, all she could manage was a steady “no, no, no, no, no”, interspersed with the occasional hasty prayer to the Goddess for intercession. Strike him with impotence. Give her labia teeth. At least clear up his buboes before he _gave them to her_.

It didn’t work.

On the other side of the pillow, the head slaver stood over Freike, palming his own erection beneath his outsized codpiece. None of his men were interested in buggering the elf, no matter how smooth and slender he was. This suited the bandit chief just fine - more for him. He let the twink-y magician babble and extemporize and make excuses until it no longer amused him, then laid down the law: he was going to fuck his ass, and he could either do it with his dick covered in spit, or he could do it dry.

So Freike shut up and sucked his dick. With his hands tied behind him, he couldn’t hold it steady. Or push it away when the grizzled veteran slapped him across the face with its length. After a couple such false starts, he began complaining bitterly, enticing the mercenary to finally shut him up with a mouthful of cock.

The elf had zero dick sucking experience, His instinct to keep his airway clear kept most of the slaver’s sizeable wang unsucked. His tongue circling the glans (he assumed this was the right thing to do) was nice, at first. But the highwayman had other ideas.

“Take it as deep as ye please. On yer own arse be it if ye don’t get me slick enough.”

In truth, he was hoping to turn the elf into his personal dick sucker. A blowjob machine so skilled at swallowing cock that the old bandit forgot about his ass entirely. He imagined a collar around the elf’s neck, bulging with dick. But that day was somewhere in the future, if it ever arrived. For now, Freike was having trouble getting the thing all the way into his mouth, let alone his throat.

Well, he’d have plenty of time to learn. For now, the enthusiasm was nice. And the sheer decadent pleasure of forcing a victim to take an active role in their own violation. Perk of slave trading.

Enough woolgathering, the crusty brigand decided. Time to let his bitch know he wasn’t fucking around.

“Time’s up, lad.”

Freike pulled off with a gasp. “Are you sure? I really felt I was getting the hang of it.”

“Heh. You’ll learn. Some other time.” It really was tempting to cum in his mouth, the way his pouty lips were all puffy from sucking cock. But no, he had a rougher lesson to teach.

The old sod pushed the elf onto his back, squishing his bound hands painfully, and pulled his breeches off. The others had stolen Freike’s boots, so the pants came down with minimal fuss. Freike’s babbling grew more frantic. The slaver made to stuff a ball of knotted fabric in his victim’s mouth. The elf shied away, the bandit sighed.

“This is for yer own good - unless ye’d rather break yer teeth.”

Trusting the wisdom of the slaver’s experience, Freike opened his mouth and accepted the gag. He was getting a lot of practice breathing through his nose today.

The old slaver knew a thing or two about breaking a man’s ass in. He knew you could open it gently, one finger at a time, until the moment of penetration. He also knew how to do it rough, with _just_ enough spit on his dick not cause any permanent damage. And that’s how he did it this time. The lad needed to learn who was in charge. Where that pretty mouth would get him, if he spent it on jokes and insults instead of polishing his owner’s dick.

So he hoisted Freike’s legs up over his shoulders and pushed his dick into the elf’s butt. The elf’s eyes went wide and he kicked instinctively, but the old slaver’s firm hands kept him from struggling away. He pressed forward and folded Freike almost in half, pushing his dick in to the balls.

He could hear the cleric shrieking somewhere behind him, as Burya pumped her full of pox ridden cock. The halfling woman moaned and cried alternatively, the rest of the boys venting their frustration at being denied a new plaything. Well, he had extended the offer. Their own fault for leaving this prime piece of ass for his personal use.

The missionary position let him see the elf’s red face screw up in pain and humiliation, but also put a lot of weight on his hands, which were bound behind him. The crusty slaver was trying to fuck his latest catch, not cripple him. Fortunately, there was an easy solution to the problem.

“Ah, I’ll give yer hands a rest.”

He got a firm grip on Freike and laid back on the soft sheets of the giant bed, pulling the elf into a sitting position on his dick. That forced the elf into a squat. His rapist magnanimously helped him balance with two strong hands on Freike’s hips.

“Now, ye can sit there and sulk, or ye can commence to riding. My cock comes out of ye when I’ve done my business.”

Freike glared at the bandit. If his mouth had been free, he would have said something incredibly witty and hurtful. But his mouth was full, his hands were tied, and he wasn’t going anywhere until he rode the bandit’s dick cowgirl.

Maybe the worst part, or close to it, was the way bouncing on the slaver’s dick made his own erection flop up and down. That was just plain undignified - is what he’d have said if his mouth had been free. The slaver just laughed and slapped his ass. Which hurt, but not nearly as much as the dick inside him.

The old warrior gave Freike another swat every time he slowed down. He let the elf spend all his energy, until he couldn’t lift himself up again, thighs exhausted from squatting.

“Ye want me to finish in ye?”

The elf glared. The slaver slapped his ass, hard. The elf nodded. And the slaver obliged him, squirting a thick load of semen up his butt. Freike groaned and scowled. His neglected cock twitched.

While the burly, disease ridden Burya finished raping the priestess Cosma, the bandit chief pulled his dick out of the elf Freike and dumped him on the bed, letting his cum filled asshole leak onto the musty sheets. The elf, once ungagged, made some smart remark, asking the mercenary to let him know when he put it in, because he certainly couldn’t feel anything. The slaver grinned and, by the expedient of painfully pinching Freike’s untended erection, convinced the elf to suck his dick clean.

The halfling woman was pleading, in a keening voice that annoyed the boss. Whoever was fucking her didn’t listen. The ghoul howled at the sun, visible as a big red ball through the drapes above.

The next day, the slavers packed up their camp and set out into the castle, in search of more human plunder. They had many more heads to take before they could count this expedition a success.

The ghoul loped along on all fours, moving gracefully despite his bound hands. The halfling woman shuffled ungracefully, the remains of her cloak wrapped around her waist to clumsily cover her nakedness. Freike limped beside Cosma, whispering half baked escape plans. Cosma stumbled along in a daze. She wished her hands were bound in front of her, so she could scratch herself. Her genitals were already starting to itch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been years since I posted any M/M, so I decided to fix that.


	3. Wine

The five thieves from the Empire had high expectations for the giant’s wine cellar. In truth, it was less a wine cellar, and more a whole wine producing ecosystem - though strangely absent of vintiers. Vaults of barrels gave way to cavernous tasting rooms. Tasting rooms opened up to rolling hillsides of champagne grapes, lit by smeared skylights heavy with ivy a hundred feet above. Amid clouds of purple butterflies and the distant sound of drunken snoring, they found a magic horn that issued forth gallons of red wine when blown. Their delight was soured when, on the third blast, Audo the cutpurse was himself reduced to red wine, body poured out through the horn as he blew it. But, it confirmed they had found a powerful trinket. And now the shares would be split four ways instead of five.

It was in this mood of ambivalence that they encountered a trip of satyrs, in a banquet hall amid the gigantic skeletons of three long dead monks. And the encounter was friendly, at first. The satyrs gamboled and played instruments, and invited the thieves to join them in drink and dance. The whole group was pretty sloshed by then, with one exception, and it didn’t take much cajoling to entice everyone to join. Everyone except Sophia the grifter. She didn’t trust anyone who wanted her drunk, especially if they had swords on their belts and bows strung, and big unclothed erections swinging gaily as they danced. So Sophia warned the other thieves not to join in the dance, and not to drink the wine. And they didn’t listen. And when the satyrs’ swords rose into the air, singing, and they fired poison arrows that drove the thieves mad, so that they continued to dance as they were cut down, Sophia was already running.

The satyrs might have been faster than her. Maybe. She didn’t look back to check. She avoided straight lines, ducking around corners and climbing over obstacles. She needed to not get shot, and she needed to break line of sight, and she needed to run for twice as long as she thought was necessary to escape pursuit. Down the stairs of an amphitheater, then dive through the vomitorium at the base of the stage. Through the stained glass workshop, where the smallest piece was taller than a ship’s mast. Up the terraces of an opium garden, crawling through gaps in the shrubbery and trying not to bend too many poppy stalks that might give away the path she’d taken.

She ran into an arched chamber, with a bay window looking out over the sabre-shaped peninsula of black sand far below. There was a fountain, pouring from one of the walls into a pool with a ring of benches. There were six women, lounging on the seats. They were disheveled, clad in animal skins, and clearly buzzed. They were talking about something. They stopped when they saw Sophia, at the same time she saw them.

Sophia sized up the situation. Her blood was still pumping with a runner’s high. If she ran now, she might make it another hour. If she rested, she would be too exhausted to escape. They could get up in time to stop her if she ran for the exits across the room, so she turned to flee the way she came in-

And was stopped in her tracks by two more women, entering behind her. They, too, stopped in mid conversation.

“There was one of those tree things, with the grapes, it- oh, hey.”

That was both doors. Could she make it to the window? Would there be a cornice to drop onto, or would she fall all the way?

“You got something, sticking out of your…”

The woman was wearing a spotted skin, like it came from a dalmatian. She was pointing at Sophia’s leg, staring like it was a five course meal and she hadn’t eaten in days.

It was the oldest trick in the book. Sophia looked down anyway. The slender shaft of a poisoned arrow was embedded in her thigh.

Oh,  _ that’s  _ why she wasn’t tired.

She fell over. One of them caught her. That woke her up  _ fast _ . She tried to get away, get the knife from her belt. Someone grabbed her by the wrist. She kicked and almost fell again. Someone shouted in her ear.

“HEY.”

The woman’s eyes were wild, pupils blown wide. Her face was greasy and she looked ready to tear Sophia to shreds.

“Relax.”

Sophia pretended to relax.

She let them half lead, half carry her to one of the benches. They didn’t take her knife, even after they saw her reach for it. They didn’t need to. There were eight of them, all crowded around her. That wasn’t relaxing. It was the opposite of relaxing.

One dipped a wide bronze  _ kylix  _ into the fountain and pressed it into her hands. She pretended to sip it, but they made her drink. It smelled like wine, and tasted like wine, because it was wine. White and sweet, with a crisp finish and a faint hint of  _ pourriture noble _ . She tried to push it away after a sip. It was good, but she didn’t want to be drunk. They insisted, with hands on her shoulders that squeezed a bit too hard to be gentle. She took a sip, because the alternative was freaking out and getting torn to shreds.

So she finished the bowl, and they filled another for her. One of them took her hand and told her to take a deep breath, and another pushed the arrow shaft the rest of the way through her leg. She bit her lip and didn’t scream, even when she felt the skin rupture on the other side. The wine must have helped. They poured her some more. They rolled up her pant leg to access the wound, but they couldn’t get it up her thigh. So they took her pants off. She wasn’t drunk enough to take that sitting down, but three pairs of hands kept her sitting anyway. So they got her pants off and began fussing over the wound, making sure none of the fabric got pushed into the hole.

They all had this weird look, like they were vibrating with anticipation. Waiting for her to give them an excuse. Which made her more nervous, which made her drink more in spite of herself. There were a lot of hands touching her now. A lot of woman who smelled like a lot of wine, with big sharp nails resting their edges on her body. When they took her pants, they took her belt and her boots, which meant both knives were now out of reach. So when the biggest one with the thickest mane of dark, shaggy hair asked to share her cup, she couldn’t refuse. This was good. If they drank the wine too, it meant they hadn’t slipped anything into it. Probably.

The leak in her thigh was all plugged up, but there were still a lot of hands on her. A lot of sharp claws.

The big one grinned and kissed her. First on the cheek, then the mouth. The room spun. This really wasn’t good. Sophia pawed at her, trying to push her away, to slur an explanation that she wasn’t interested. Her hand caught the edge of the woman’s deerskin and pushed it off her shoulder, sending it sliding down her body to the floor. Her breasts spilled out, and her grin widened. She sat back on the edge of the fountain and tipped the kylix, pouring wine on her nipples - sending it running in rivulets down her washboard belly, into her pubic hair - as black and bristly and thick as the hair on her head. She made a little hand gesture and the others let Sophia go.

Shit. This might be her only chance. The big one spread her legs and arched her back, inviting the thief to lick the spilled wine off. Sophia took a step forward - pretending to stare at the woman’s enormous breasts, actually steadying herself against all the wine.

Fuck it. Nerves got the better of caution. She pushed off with one foot, aiming for a gap in the crowd. Maybe she’d clear the circle before they realized-

The big one hit her. More a clothesline than a full on body blow. Sophia tried to fall gracefully and was reminded of why she didn’t normally drink. She panicked before she hit the floor, and the big lady hit her when she landed. With her heel, catching her rib with a poorly aimed but powerful stomp. The thief rolled and tried to crawl away - she was good at rolling and crawling, even drunk. A forest of female feet blocked her path, kicking and forcing her back so the top bitch could whale on her.

Sophia covered her head and curled on her side. A kick in the small of the back, another stomp to the shoulder that almost dislocated her arm. Dammit. If she wanted to be forcefed wine, then beaten by the biggest priestess for refusing to eat her out, she would have  _ stayed at the fucking convent. _ The beating went on. The crowd was yelling something, she couldn’t hear it over her own screaming. If you didn’t scream, they’d hit you until you did. But if they thought you were faking it, they’d make it even worse. That’s why she stopped when she realized nobody was hitting her anymore. She trailed off into sobs, then just sniffled. At least nobody aimed for her head.

Spotted skin crouched in front of her. She’d shed her spotted skin, showing off her rangy body, covered in scars.

“Hey.”

Spotted skin put a hand on her shoulder. Sophia drunkenly realized they’d yanked her shirt off, at some point during the festivities or the pummeling. She remembered the sharp nails. The kicking was bad, the claws might be a lot worse.

“You came here to rob us, right?”

Shit.

“No.”

Spotted skin pinched her nipple and twisted. Sophia cried out and tried to curl up, to shield herself. The huge one pinned her with a hand on her nearly-mangled shoulder. The rangy one ran her tongue over her teeth.

“So… You came here to rob us, right?”

Sophia sniffed and nodded. The fingers on her nipple un-twisted, but didn’t let go.

“That’s fine. No, really. We’ve got something great we want to give you. You don’t have to steal it.”

The big one let her shoulder go.

“We just need something from you first.”

She let go of Sophia’s nipple. The thief cringed and covered her breasts with an arm. Spotted skin sat back on her haunches and waited patiently for her to rise to a kneeling position. She was dizzy and everything hurt. Spotted skin tilted her head and looked meaningfully at something behind her. Sophia knew what she would see when she turned her head.

She turned her head.

The top bitch was seated, again, on the edge of the fountain. Again with her legs spread. This time she poured the wine directly onto her vulva. She grinned at the thief again, an openly predatory expression which communicated volumes.

_ I want oral, but I’d be almost as happy to hit you again. _

Sophia chose oral.

Having her face stuck between a pair of powerful thighs, mouth full of muff, brought back a whole lot of nasty memories. The important thing, she remembered, was not to puke. That was important when she was sober, and doubly so when she was drunk. If you puked, they hit you again, until you puked again, and the whole thing became a vicious cycle. That was lesson number one. Lesson two was how to eat pussy so good they left you alone after. Which thankfully, she also remembered.

Top bitch certainly appreciated it. She groaned and rolled her tongue audibly in her mouth, then spoke out loud for the first time. Her voice was higher than expected, but there was a thickness to it like something was wrong with her throat.

“Fuuuuck, why did you try to run if you could do this?”

_ Maybe because I spent my whole life trying not to end up in this exact situation again, you stupid bitch!  _ Is what she would have said, if she wasn’t on her knees with a mouthful of hairy vagina, surrounded by woman who would beat her for saying so. What actually came out of her mouth sounded more like the sound of a small woman sucking on a large clitoris. No points for guessing why. The wine was still very good, even licked off a woman’s vulva. Though the occasional pube that came with it, Sophia could do without. Along with several other parts of the experience.

The big lady didn’t drag it out, or yank her hair when she came. Sophia expected a faceful of salty and faintly wine-tasting fluids, but the woman wasn’t a squirter. Just made some throaty sounds and rolled her hips. Twitched and groaned. Then it was over. That part, anyway.

They let Sophia have her waterskin back. They took it away before she finished it, and made her drink more wine. The top bitch smiled lazily. Dalmatian skin rubbed her back, avoiding the fresh bruises.

“That’s good. You did good, sweet thing. You’re doing really good.”

She was worried they all wanted head. But they didn’t. Or they were just patient. They helped her walk, then deposited her, gently, in a heap of cushions she hadn’t noticed. Or she was sitting in someone’s lap. They were so careful now to avoid the spots where she’d just been hit. Or she was too drunk to fixate on the pain. Everything was a little fuzzy. Her mouth tasted like grapes and noble rot and vagina. Her head still hurt. Someone massaged her shoulders and neck. That felt a little better. Someone was unwrapping the linen wrap around her pelvis - the only piece of clothing she still had on. She told them to put it back. They didn’t. She knew what was about to happen. But she was drunk and exhausted and sore and snatching back her grimy underclothes would take  _ so much energy _ .

Oh, there were a lot of them now. All naked. They fed her more water, then more wine, with honey or something in it. They rubbed her with oil, which she ordinarily hated (you had to  _ scrape _ it off). One of the ladies - one with a round belly and immense breasts - wanted Sophia to focus on something. The fingers of her left hand, nails trimmed close and filed soft. Not like the claws the others had. The woman licked her full, pouty lips, and crooked her ring and index fingers in a jabbing motion. Which didn’t leave much to the imagination.

Sophia looked inward to her strong sense for danger and self preservation, hoping to find a final reserve of strength with which to spring free and escape. But she couldn’t find it. Just a tingling sensation from the oil smeared on her bruises.

The round woman touched her.

Sophia had been fingerfucked before. Men had done it as a precursor to their clumsy dicks. The Priestesses did it when they felt an obligation to “reciprocate”, in a way that would further degrade her. She’d never been fingerblasted by someone who knew what she was doing, and cared about doing it right. Which isn’t to say this was some beautiful sexual awakening, where she realized how good sex with a woman could really be. At the end of the day, she was surrounded by a pack of maenads who had beaten her, force fed her, then forced themselves on her.

But, as part of being an evangelical mystery cult that converted its all-female clergy through forcible sexual bonding rites, they were  _ pretty good _ at fingerfucking.

Round face had liked girls even before her messy initiation into the cult. She had been a rogue herself, in a past life, adept at quickly sussing out a particular conquest’s weak spots - before the husband or bodyguard or what-have-you realized she was there. She was a little older and a little fatter now, but she hadn’t lost her touch - in either sense of the word. She discovered quickly that Sofia responded loudly and emotively to a pair of fingers inserted into her vagina with the palm face-up, then curled to press on a particularly sensitive layer of tissue. Which the round woman did again and again, like pulling the trigger of a pistol. Sofia wriggled and made embarrassing sounds as the woman squelched around inside her. The others kissed and licked and stroked her, worshiping her body. There was no point in holding out. The part of her brain that hadn’t drowned in a sea of wine reasoned that once she came, it would be over.

That part of her brain was wrong. First because fat-face kept fingering her as she crested over her first orgasm, demanding and extracting a second. Sophia wriggled and tried to get away, but the cultists weren’t having any of that. They were just getting warmed up. Spotted skin told her she could take it, and she was beautiful, and they all forgave her. Sophia told her to shut up - though she only got through the first word before she came again and lost the power of speech.

That was orgasms one through three. And it went on like that. They gave her a little more water and twice as much wine. Far too much wine. Sophia held out until her bladder felt ready to burst. Then she came again and peed all over the fat woman’s arm - which by then was wrist deep inside her. She cringed and babbled an apology, still afraid to anger them. The cultists laughed and kissed her cheeks and kept flicking her bean.

In between the chain orgasms they squeezed out of her - though they only paused when her breathing became so irregular they worried she’d asphyxiate - the alpha bitch whose pussy Sophia had eaten would hold her protectively. Her thick cloud of hair formed an excellent curtain between the former-thief’s sore eyes and the setting sun out the big window. But then the rest dragged her back and stroked her and squeezed her and made her sweat and cry out and come again.

It was during her twelfth orgasm that it happened. She was so sore from coming and so thirsty and so sick of being drunk she actually begged them to stop - she hadn’t begged them when they beat her, but now that they were all friends, maybe they’d listen. The strange part was, she wasn’t tired. The runner’s high was back, the rush of endorphins that energized her, in spite of her exhaustion.

So the twelfth orgasm tore through her like a wave of burning hot wine, and something changed.

One of the woman shouted. They all shouted. It was an infectious glossolalia that spread through the crowd. If Sophia’s throat wasn’t raspy from screaming and moaning and drinking too much, if she wasn’t hyperventilating and shaking, she’d have instinctively joined in.

There was an outline in the door. A naked man(?) with a twisted staff in one hand. The cultists laughed and clapped and danced and shouted. They were happy. They were happy for  _ her _ . There was a burning light behind the man, that kept her from focusing on his features. She felt a fog descend over her mind, distinct from the one inflicted on her senses by the wine. Or perhaps what she felt was a fog finally lifting.

He raised his staff.

She saw things differently after that.

The two survivors of the satyr ambush recuperated in the purple satyr tavern, standing on a boulder sized crust of bread that stood like a small island in the shallow sea of spoiled, vinegary wine on the floor. They had been hard pressed, but they made it, exhausting all their ammunition and the one scroll they carried in their escape. Leaving one of their number dead, and another lost to the infinite halls of the winery.

Felix Four Fingers punched Hal the Knife in the shoulder and pointed.

There was a small crowd of women - nine or ten at most - coming toward them across the tavern floor. The wine was ankle deep in places, and waist deep in others, but the women moved through it as though it was air, seeming to skate over the top. They screamed and yelped with delight and they had murder in their eyes.

The pair of thieves looked for a way out. There wasn’t one. They climbed to the top of the loaf to make their stand. Felix drew his rapier. Hal made a couple test cuts with his messer, slashing the air to calm his nerves.

At the head of the maenads was a small woman clad only in a black goatskin. Her hair was mussy with dried sweat and wine, and she carried a thyrsus in her right hand - a staff topped with a pinecone, dripping honey. The woman was Sophia. She screamed as she ran, voice filled with a lust for violence and nary a hint of recognition that these were her former comrades she was about to tear to shreds.

And that’s what she did.


	4. Interlude: Third Lodge of the Mystical Star

The five undergraduates from the University had less trouble navigating the giant’s castle than expected. They were second year students, and in order to advance to the next class, they had to complete a practicum - a project undertaken outside the classroom, which demonstrated what they had learned. Their wizened professor had suggested they plunder the abode of Gargantua, whose shifting halls still contained unpillaged reservoirs of arcane knowledge and power.

Their destination was the Third Lodge of the Mystical Star. They had been told that an obscure trap on the door kept the place hidden from the waves of brigands and adventurers who periodically passed through the castle. So they were puzzled and disappointed when they arrived to find the cherub statue already smeared with blood, the secret door already wide open.

The parlour was filled with the wreckage of a summoning ritual gone horribly right. Salt circles, candles, tomes, and several sorcerers - all frozen in expressions of sheer terror, bodies transmuted to pure gold. This alone would have been cause for celebration - all the students had to do was haul the heavy statues out of the castle, and they’d be handsomely rewarded. Either for retrieving venerable sages of the Mystical Star, who could be restored to life by an experienced wizard, or for the value of their transmuted bodies, which could be melted down and recast as gold ingots.

But they couldn’t take the statues just yet. Someone had opened the door, and the statues hadn’t been removed. Whoever broke in ahead of the sophomores was still there. There were a number of doors leading out of the room. The largest one was ajar. There had obviously been furniture piled in front of it, which someone had scattered when they went through. Listening carefully, they could hear a rhythmic thumping coming from the other side - sharp and heavy. The wizarding students looked nervously at the door, and each other. Nobody wanted to approach it. Friglash, the bravest of the lot, eventually rolled his eyes and stepped up to peer through.

The room beyond the door was a library. The shelves were piled high with tomes and scrolls. In between the shelves were alcoves, in which stood wooden sculptures of birds, brightly painted. Three of the statues were splintered, smashed by a heavy object. One of the spellbooks lay open on the floor. Next to the book was an enormous, luxurious fur coat, spread to make an improvised rug. On the rug was a giant-sized dwarf woman on her hands and knees, totally naked. The thumping sound came from the ogre-sized ogre, mostly clothed, fucking her from behind. He had big hands on her hips, and judging by the sounds the dwarf made, a big dick. The dwarf grunted and gasped and swore. Her face was was sweaty and flushed. She had the expression of a woman who let herself be talked into something by a man just so he’d shut up about it, but found she had bitten off more than she could chew. Or suck, in this instance.

Friglash figured the dwarf woman was normally dwarf sized. But the big guy wanted to fuck her, so he cracked one of the library spellbooks and dropped an  _ Enlarge _ . That explained the ogre’s itty bitty reading glasses, which he kept on for sex.

The dwarf's expression changed when she spotted the student sorcerer peering through the door. She didn’t shout or scramble away from the ogre. Just glared daggers at Friglash, private humiliation suddenly and unexpectedly shared with a third party. He looked away, then immediately back. She was still scowling, eyes locked on him. She moved a hand to cover her tits as they swung below her. Which forced her to drop to an elbow with the other arm. Which still wasn’t enough to hold her upright through the rough ogre sex, so she ended up with her back arched and her face buried in the fur.

The ogre frowned in concentration and serene pleasure. And continued fucking her, face-down-ass-up. Friglash weighed his options. Either the ogre’s reading glasses fucked up his distance vision and he couldn’t see him, or he considered the voyeuristic mage totally beneath his notice. So either this was his best shot to catch the big guy with his pants down, or he was so incredibly powerful that alpha striking him while his dick was hanging out wouldn’t do anything. Which meant bursting in and blowing all their spells could be a terrible idea. He looked over his shoulder at the other student-sorcerers. They had their staffs and wands and assorted trinkets at the ready. They stared at him with wide eyed anticipation, wondering what he’d seen.

Friglash put a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture. Then he turned back to peer through the door again. He reached into his trousers and adjusted his erection, pulling it out of the leg and pointing it up toward the waistband.

He might need to run, fast.


	5. Blood

The mercenary Arina and the halfling Vizzini were happy with their adventures in the giant’s castle. They had found a magic chisel, several bottles of good red wine, two sacks worth of silver jewelry, and a cursed chastity belt that neither had been brave or stupid enough to try on. They had avoided trouble by expedient of moving slowly, listening carefully, and hiding whenever anyone more numerous or powerful than themselves came near. It had been slow going - they had eaten the last of their pickles and pemmican while they waited atop a giant size column for an animate blob of spoiled wine to stop hunting them.

But if they were hungry, this room was their salvation. The way they’d come in was impassible due to the explosion of a phosphorescent web on the obsidian bridge, so they’d detoured through the giant’s kennel. The kennel opened into a crematorium. The crematorium into a prison, whose bars were so large and widely spaced that they could simply walk right through. And now they were in a meat locker, with titanic slabs of unidentified flesh dangling from hooks eighty feet up.

They were crossing the room, hunched against the cold (neither of them were getting any younger) thinking about shaving a sliver off one of the steaks and pan searing it, when they heard the sound of danger. Really it was the sound of human feet and voices, but in their experience the two were synonymous.

They could have hidden among the dangling meats, but that would have left the possibility of the approaching crowd - and it sounded like a crowd - finding them. So Arina gave Vizzini a boost up to sink his hooks into one of the meats, and Vizzini pulled Arina up after him, and they quickly began to climb. They were a good twenty feet up before the crowd came into view below.

It was a horde of Northmen - a small horde, only six deep. But they were loud and shirtless and heavily armed, and gnawed the edges of their shields in a manner that suggested the adventuring duo was right to stay out of their way. The burly berserkers didn’t look up - the room was cold enough that the meat didn’t drip juices when Vizzini got his hooks into it, thankfully. It was hell on his hands, but he had gloves for that. Arina cinched her overweight pack tight and cursed herself for not finding a more creative treasure-disposal solution. But hell if she was going to leave the loot behind.

They made it to fifty feet before the topless Danes began to yell. Arina looked down, afraid they’d been spotted. They were out of hurling range for javelins and handaxes, but the Northerners had upper body strength to spare, and could beat them in a race to the top. Luckily, they weren’t shouting because they’d spotted the two fortune seekers. They were screaming and banging their weapons together at a group of plainly dressed villeins. The peasants carried bills and pitchforks and scythes and meat cleavers and small knives, and they drooled with a lust for violence that almost matched the berserkers. Religious ecstacy? Ergotism? Arina and Vizinni kept climbing. 

They got to the top right as battle was joined. The meat hooks were locked in to a system of rafters, which were wide enough to lie down on without dangling over the side. Arina and Vizinni looked over the side anyway, watching the brawl below. The Geats had an advantage with their shields, but the peasants presented a mass of polearms that kept them from pressing it. The first casualty was an overeager serf, who stepped out of position to gut a northman and was cut down by six dane-axes. The bloodshed spurred both sides to abandon careful maneuvering and the melee became general.

“Damn” the halfling murmured to the old soldier of fortune. Arina nodded in appreciation. Even with the gloves, her hands were still chilly. She scooted closer to Vizzini and stuffed her hands under his arms, intent on warming them. He growled and shrugged her off - her hands were always freezing. She did it again and he swatted her - not hard, but enough to stop her from pressing her size advantage. She giggled - it wasn’t really a giggle, she was a bit old for that, but the idea is the important thing - and let him alone until he could get the blanket out of his pack. He sat deliberately in the middle of the support beam as he did this, well away from the edges. He pulled the blanket out and wrapped it around Arina and himself. She stuffed her hands under his arms. He allowed this.

They watched the violence unfold. Two norsemen had been skewered, along with three peasants. Vizzini wagered a _chrisos_ that the farmers would prevail. Arina took the bet. She put her hand on the warmest part of the halfling’s body - his cock. Her hand was cold, but it was also her hand, starting a civil war in his genitals over whether they should shrivel up or swell up. Swelling up won. He rolled on his side so she could reach it easier. He’d get her back. With a hand up her shirt. It didn’t do a good job avenging his poor frigid dick, because his hands were big and warm in a way hers weren’t. It was more like a reward for bad behavior. It would encourage her to do it again. Which, he supposed, was fine.

Maybe it was the little squirt of danger from the narrow escape that got them going. Maybe the violence below was foreplay by proxy. They’d done it in stranger places. 

She climbed onto his cock - which was a pretty good cock, he thought, nice and wide for a man his height - and fucked him. Not a bouncing motion, not really riding - more a horizontal movement where she lay flat on his body and threw herself back onto his heavy dick. That’s how she liked to do it, it got her off  _ fast  _ and conserved energy in doing so. And if she liked it, so did he. It meant they could fuck more often. Which meant they did it with the frequency of a couple twenty years younger. And it also put her breasts right in his face - though that only applied when she was nude.

Ok, he didn’t just like it. He  _ loved  _ it. He had told her as much, because you were never more than twenty minutes away from death in their line of work. He loved that she knew when he needed help with something, and when to sit back and let an old man (he wasn’t  _ that  _ old, he reminded himself) salvage his pride. He loved her iron grey hair that clung to her face with sweat whenever she untied it. He loved her powerful legs and the way he could feel the hard muscle of her core if he pressed his hand on her thin layer of belly fat. He loved how ashamed she was of her scars - not because he felt she should be ashamed, but because it made him happy to lick and kiss them all in sequence. He loved that she was human and he could cum in her with no consequences - except when she wanted him to suck it out of her and spit it back into her mouth. Which he always refused to do, so that she’d pin his head between her thighs until he “relented” and snowballed her.

He had never been devout, never prayed since the last time he saw his mother. But he’d started leaving a bit of every meal out for old Moonshades. Clearly someone up there liked him, and though he’d never asked for it, he always repaid a gift with a gift. Reciprocity was what separated civilized people from savages. Eighty feet below, the three surviving berserkers finished hacking open the remains of the fallen, to let their spirits escape to the other world.

Well, that was the end of that. No hurry to get down, though. They could doze here a while, then slice a hock off one of the meat slabs for breakfast. Vizzini wriggled out of Arina’s grasp and tied a length of rope around one of the big iron rings that held the scaffolding to the ceiling. He knotted the other end around his waist, and did the same for Arina. It took energy that he’d rather spend sleeping. But you didn’t last as long as he had in this game if you didn’t take certain precautions - like tying yourself in when you slept in a high place. Arina grumbled and pulled the blanket back over them.

He wasn’t crazy about the way she held on to him after sex. Sure, it felt nice to have his old bones held tight. But he wasn’t some teddy bear to be squeezed and clung to.

He let it go. Putting up with things was part of life. And her hands weren’t so cold anymore.


End file.
